Build diversity and balance

I am not sure what others think but there is a very worrying aspect of how GGG balances builds. As soon as a build is popular or considered powerful in one league it gets nerfed so hard it isnt viable in the next.

Actually not sure nerfed is accurate, more like gutted, drawn and quartered, decapitated, dissected, taken to the four corners of the globe and burnt.

CoC discharge is an example of this, now I agree it was too powerful, and I agree it hurt game performance. But the 30% damage reduction could have been less brutal to allow less casts per second to work so that the build came into line with others while not destroying peoples PC.

GGG always over nerfs builds I am not sure they understand all the ramifications

1. Build diversity. Imagine if they actually balanced right so each season instead of replacing all the old viable with new ones, GGG actually added new viable builds while balancing old ones so they were still viable. The number of builds would be really interesting

2. Loss of players. I really liked COC discharge, I also played a voltaxic build that was even stronger, but coc discharge was just fun. Now its dead and I find a lot of the new builds so boring. I am currently frostblades and man, I want to neck myself it so boring. You lose people when their favourite build gets annihilated

3. Item damage. This is huge, every time GGG decimates a build, all of its uniques become worthless trash. They are unintentionally destroying item droprates by destroying the related builds. This league I found one decent item by 83. 1 item. This is an ARPG loot is important and I would have been fine with getting cospris will, its a tier 1 item right, but its now rubbish and sells for bugger all. Mjolnier is in the same boat now. It really hurts to find such rare items, that are now useless.

So please GGG try to understand balancing a build should not involve completely and utterly destroying its viability. Bring it into line with other builds, that is what balance is supposed to be

I understand the points you make, but I do not agree with a lot of them. Sure, I never played one of the op builds that got absolutely annihilated, precisely because they are op.
What I want to say is, how useful or not an item is depends entirely on what you do with it.
I often challenge myself to make certain things work. You'd be surprised with what you can get away with in this game.

It is funny though, in the class subforums there are Cospri's and even Mjolner builds that seem to be doing endgame just fine (haven't actually tried them myself, but the guides and videos look convincing). Maybe it is not so much GGG as it is the overreaction of the playerbase that "destroyed" those builds.

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Burgingham wrote:

It is funny though, in the class subforums there are Cospri's and even Mjolner builds that seem to be doing endgame just fine (haven't actually tried them myself, but the guides and videos look convincing). Maybe it is not so much GGG as it is the overreaction of the playerbase that "destroyed" those builds.

I'm 100% sure you're right about that. I highly doubt that CI, CoC, mjölner, poison or even voltaxic for that matter got absolutely destroyed. The player base may say so, sure, but I don't think that's the case.

I understand what you are saying but the only true measure of an items value is its sale price. Why? Because that is the only objective metric that can be used to measure item value. And there can be no debate that by the only applicable metric of item value, mjolnier and cospris will, have dropped in value massively.

For example a person that is 100% dedicated to playing a poison build every league forever will like cospris will, and value it higher than it sale price. But that persons value of that item is not objective, and hence irrelevant in terms of measuring item value except for his/her effect on the average price, which will be minuscule.

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Shaantituz wrote:

I understand what you are saying but the only true measure of an items value is its sale price. Why? Because that is the only objective metric that can be used to measure item value. And there can be no debate that by the only applicable metric of item value, mjolnier and cospris will, have dropped in value massively.

For example a person that is 100% dedicated to playing a poison build every league forever will like cospris will, and value it higher than it sale price. But that persons value of that item is not objective, and hence irrelevant in terms of measuring item value except for his/her effect on the average price, which will be minuscule.

There´s always gonna be cheap and expensive items. You´re basically complaining about the fact that the market isn´t static and that prices shift according to supply and demand.

Market value doesn´t necessarily reflect the effectiveness of an item. Just look at the prices for Orbs of Binding vs Alchs or Disfavour (350ish C) vs Dibeons Dirge (1 Alch).

Shaking up the market should be none of GGGs concerns.

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3. Item damage. This is huge, every time GGG decimates a build, all of its uniques become worthless trash. They are unintentionally destroying item droprates by destroying the related builds. This league I found one decent item by 83. 1 item. This is an ARPG loot is important and I would have been fine with getting cospris will, its a tier 1 item right, but its now rubbish and sells for bugger all. Mjolnier is in the same boat now. It really hurts to find such rare items, that are now useless.

I feel the item's and their prices are mostly reflected by which streamers are using/creating/making videos on them.

Once it is announced that a build might not be META, it becomes a fire-sale.

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Floppinger wrote:

Market value doesn´t necessarily reflect the effectiveness of an item. Just look at the prices for Orbs of Binding vs Alchs or Disfavour (350ish C) vs Dibeons Dirge (1 Alch).

Shaking up the market should be none of GGGs concerns.

Yeah, i wont argue that Disfavour is a great weapon. But Hegemony's Era isnt much behind, when build properly. But difference in gear costs for those two is MASSIVE. For Hegemony, you can buy 4-mod jewels (2 solid DPS stats, life, resist) for 20-30 chaos. For Disfavour, you can barely afford 3-mod jewels for that price, and their rolls will be of worse quality (Not to mention that Hegemony itself costs few chaos). It's not about rolls (odds are relatively the same on jewels), it's about popularity.
And before 3.0, situation was around the same, though builds using Hegemony were MUCH stronger. They had better gems available, could get massive DPS boost from Abyssus/Facebreaker, crits enhanced bleed/poison, etc.

Berserker bout to be on the chopping block next then everyone will just switch to Doom prism or something lol

Then doom prism gets hit and people well go Warchief totem spam.

etc
etc
etc

Stupid shit.

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Shaantituz wrote:

I understand what you are saying but the only true measure of an items value is its sale price. Why? Because that is the only objective metric that can be used to measure item value.

You do know that item prices are just made up on the fly?